Live food leftovers - what to do with them?

[djb78]

What if you add calcium powder to mealworms will this help with extra calcium, my brother puts his crickets in cal powder for all his baby lizards as he was told by a breeder.

[Gerry Marantelli]

yes - that is why you dust food with calcium - to balance it out because gut loading often doesn't work for the reasons i mentioned before.

Unfortunately dusting is not as controlled as you cannot control how much you give and it can fall off before the food is eaten. But it is better than nothing. the very best thing is to feed variety and better quality insects.

[Tiaris]

Yes - that is essentailly why we gutload anything. Unfortunately we are battling biology - a mealworm has low calcium because it has low need of calcium and therefore has evolved low desire to eat calcium containing foods. Organisms tend to be made of what they need to be made of for their kind of organism - for a mealworm that is high P and low Ca. Organsisms also develop strategies to access what they need in their diet - so if you are a mealworm you don't look for or like calcium containing foods. If you are a finch you hunt many different insects and you may even seasonally eat different things to get more of one thing or another for breeding, wintering etc.. eg. more calcium containing insects for breeding season to make strong eggs. Unfortunately when you are a finch in cage you eat what your owner feeds you, and this is where we get problems as the easily accessed or cheap insects are favored over more variety or higher quality ones that are harder to get or more expensive.

Variety is the spice of life - and you are what you eat .... so if you do not want an aviary full of flying mealworms ... buy some maggots! (plug) and price is no excuse as they are cheaper than mealworms and a better quality food.

But also a serious PS. VARIETY VARIETY VARIETY and know your pets needs - if your finch has a skeleton (most do) and it is made of calcium based minerals (always true) then it needs to access dietary calcium. If you're feeding with too many low calcium foods you will eventually make your pet unhealthy - finches, frogs doesn't matter.

Great answer, thanks.

[MadHatter]

A friend of mine gut loads all his mealworms with Insectivore Rearing Mix before feeding out to his birds. Perhaps not a total solution, but seems like an improvement over the usual mealie to me.

[Gerry Marantelli]

Insectivore mix is made to be a balanced food for insectivores - if you can get them to eat it. unfortunately that is not how it is being used in this case, it is being used to try and return an imbalanced diet to normal. Its a bit like trying to fix a kid who eats ice cream and lollies all day by hiding a piece of lettuce in the icecream. If you wish to redress the imbalance you need more than just "some" healthy food, you need foods that specifically over-compensate to adress the inadequacies. You can contine to eat icecream as long as its deficiencies are replaced elsewhere and as long as the nutrients that are overabundant in the icecream are under abundant in the other foods to compensate. insectivore mix is not overabundant in mealworm deficiencies nor is it under abundant in mealworm excesses.

while anything is an improvement over a mealworm- the low quantity (and imbalanced quality) of insectivore mix that can be held in the gut compared with the quantity of mealworm being fed to the bird makes this exercise almost pointless. That is of course if the mealworms are eating it at all.

[MadHatter]

Thanks Gerry, your point is well taken. I should hasten to add that my mate does not feed mealworms exclusively. Flies, maggots and fly pupae are also fed. The mealies are included for a bit of variety and are gut loaded in the hopes that it will somewhat improve their nutritional value.